BOSS: Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) will map out the
baryon acoustic oscillation
(BAO)
signature with unprecedented accuracy and greatly improve the constraints
on the acceleration of the expansion rate of the Universe.
The BOSS survey will use all of the dark and grey time at the Apache Point
Observatory (APO) 2.5-m telescope for five years from 2009-2014, as part
of Sloan Digital Sky Survey III.

BOSS will employ an upgraded version of the
SDSS fiber-fed spectrographs
to map the redshifts of 1.5 million Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) out to
z~0.7 over 10,000 square degrees, measuring the BAO signal in the large-scale
galaxy correlations. A simultaneous survey of z~2.5 quasars (using 20% of
the fibers) will allow us to measure the acoustic oscillations in the
correlations of the
Lyman-alpha forest.